Finally, Climate Change Explained in a Language We Understand: Cats!

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Anyone who reads this site on a regular basis is clear on one fact of modern life: Cats built the Internet. Yes, Tim Berners-Lee might have helped sort out and implement some of the mechanical practicalities, but he was certainly overseen every step of the way by our feline masters. The Internet exists entirely so that humans will watch cute cat videos and appreciate cats’ glory. All the other stuff — the banking, online gambling, porn, Amazon, computerized mapping systems — are just side benefits.

The point is, if you want to get your message across on the Internet, put a cat in it.

For example: Watch the Sierra Club’s new video, promoting the People’s Climate March in New York City next month. The march is to build awareness about climate change. Amazingly enough, despite the mass consensus of climatologists across the planet on global warming, there are people still fighting against the notion that climate change is a thing to worry about, so groups such as the Sierra Club organize marches like this.

The video shows cats facing several environmental hazards through the magic of green-screening: First, an adorable kitten is shown against the backdrop of a huge hurricane; second, we see a cat driving a car across a bridge during extreme flooding; third, a cat is shown against an enormous forest fire. As a fourth cat huddles on a dried and cracked landscape, the caption comes up:

Stop climate change … or the kitten gets it (and so do we).

Okay, it’s not the most adorable cat video on the Internet, but it is hard to inject humor into something as depressing as climate change, especially when there’s still so many people who insist that the whole thing is a communist/atheist/Muslim/enviro-hippie conspiracy to undermine Mom, apple pie, and capitalism. (Or something like that.) Granted, it’s a little bit of a riff on the classic National Lampoon cover, but it’s kind of a touching variation. The original cover just showed someone about to kill a dog; this says that we’re all in it together, kittens as well as humans. There’s not a pet lover alive who doesn’t know that feeling down to the bones. That’s why cats make such good spokescreatures for the important stuff.